


No Hero

by eevaa_fanwriter



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Friendship, aftermorosaga, gokuandvegetaaretruefriends, gokucomfortinghim, kakavege, mangaspoilers, vegetaisupset, vegetathinkingaboutthepast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:07:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28630761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eevaa_fanwriter/pseuds/eevaa_fanwriter
Summary: After the last great victory, Goku and Vegeta are called to the Nameless Planet of Milky Way's King, and they are rewarded for their courage.That medal, however, weighs like a stone around Vegeta's neck.[Little spoiler, manga chapter 67][Italian to English translate]
Relationships: Kakavege - Relationship, Son Goku/Vegeta (Dragon Ball)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 24





	No Hero

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone!  
> I apologize in advance if you'll find grammar mistakes, I'm Italian and English is not my first language.  
> This is the very first time I try to translate one of my fanfictions! Take it as an experiment ;)  
> Hope you'll like it!

NO HERO

Nothing could be more interesting than the soles of his feet pressed against the polished floor. New clean boots, new freshly ironed battle suit and a nice round medal hanging around the neck. It tightened like a noose.

Vegeta stared at the floor, elbows resting on knees and head down.

His cot was uncomfortable, hard, wedged into a two-meter-by-two-meter bunk colored by gray and blue, as sanitized as the one he had been staying in on the Frieza's Army spaceship, years and years ago.

The only differences were the messy clothes on the chair, the unmade blankets on the cot upstairs because, obviously, that esteemed clown-head with whom he shared the room had not yet learned to make his bed, at the ripe old age of forty-five.

The atmosphere on the Galactic Patrol spaceship was much less tense than what Vegeta had breathed in Frieza's Army but, after all those years, the "space sickness" was still the same.

He looked out the porthole wedged in the metal bulkhead and sighed. Black and interstellar dust. He longed to return to Earth as soon as possible. Being in the center of the universe made him think of the early part of his life, when he was a damned hitman of the worst kind.

He had spent years and years wandering in space, plundering planets and participating in the purges of populations without even understanding the real meaning. He killed without understanding why.

Stolen lives, broken families, entire villages swept away between a grin and a sadistic laugh.

And now he had a golden medal hanging around his neck that sparkled and made him a hero. Hero. Him!?

Vegeta tore it off and turned it over in his hands. The medal was cold, he brought it to his forehead and closed his eyes.

His attempt to redeem himself with the Namekian population had been successful, his apology accepted. They had also forgiven him.

But it would never be enough. It would take a century to adjust the mistakes he had made, the lives he had taken with his own hands.

He dreamed of them. They begged him for mercy in their unknown languages, they fell at his feet. And he laughed, laughed.

His planet had turned to dust and ashes; his father, his mother, his castle, the other little Saiyans he trained with. Everything went up in smoke.

Why the hell everything had been taken away from him and the others had the right to live peacefully?

Why was he forced to live under the slavery of the one who had caused the extinction of his race, while peace reigned supreme on other planets? It wasn't fair, he thought.

And so he killed them, laughed and thought his loss was a sufficient justification.

He was so angry, so furious that he became cruel, heartless monster. What should have been a life of ease - or at least some negotiating mission - had become the life of a merciless killer. And he was even convinced that he was fine with it.

He killed innocent people under the name of the Saiyan's prince.

The Saiyans, great people of warriors! Then Frieza arrived and from a great warrior people they had become a great people of cosmic dust.

And, those who remained, great murderers. Except one.

Kakarot. The esteemed clown-head who couldn't make up his bed. The decerebrate that made him change.

He had given him a chance, he had saved him and not just to keep him alive. He had saved him and brought back what he really was: the prince of warriors, not the prince of assassins.

But not even that third-class fucking idiot with too big heart and too small brain had the power to erase his past.

Not even the love of his Bulma, the affection of Trunks, Bulla and little Goten - for him as a third child - could not erase the atrocious things he had done.

Vegeta squeezed the medal tighter until the metal cracked. He threw it against the bulkhead and it folded.

Each life taken weighed like a boulder on his shoulders, each laugh in the face of death bounced between the walls of his skull, with the screams, the pleas.

There was no redemption for someone like him. Many had forgiven him, but he would never forgive himself.

He was not and never would have been a hero.

The automatic door of the cabin opened with a clang and, from it, walked in a big boy in orange battle suit, messy hair, medal around his neck and half a bar of energy food in his mouth.

«Jeeeeez!»

Vegeta raised his head to give him a distracted and annoyed look.

«This green slop they sell at the vending machine tastes really bad» Goku complained. He hardly swallowed the bar and then threw the remains into the garbage. «I'm starving!»

«You ate like a bison at the galaxy king's banquet».

«But it's been four hours ago!» Goku complained again. «When do they open the canteen for breakfast, here on the ship?»

«Certainly not at midnight» muttered his majesty.

Vegeta sometimes felt like he was there to be a father, even though his children were light years away.

«But uh, I'm starving!»

Father of a six-foot-tall boy with the most ridiculous hair he had ever seen.

«Thanks for telling me twice, I didn't understand it at first» then hissed Vegeta, tired. He would have liked to sound much more exasperated, acid as usual, pungent as every time the idiot took him to the limit by acting like an infant. «Have the decency to wait for tomorrow. We will arrive on Earth for lunchtime».

So he hoped, at least. If they wont encountered some meteor shower that would have forced them on a longer route. Things that happened all too often in that quadrant of space, near the Milky Way.

«Than okay, I'll starve» Goku muttered, compliant. Then, caught by a strange intuition, he twisted his head and began to look at him with a stupid confused expression. «Man, Vegeta, are you okay? You have such a face!»

«Well, you have one too. Annoying, clownish and even dirty with that green crap thing you were eating» replied the prince, terse.

Surprising, however, that that idiot had powers of observation when he usually couldn't look beyond an inch from his own nose. Or in addition to his own steaks plate.

«Oh, heheh!» Goku chuckled, with that childish laugh and the smile wide enough to deform his face. He reflected in the square of mirror embedded in the bulkhead to wipe his face, but his attention was caught by the crack in the metal just below it. He looked further and slowly bent down to pick up that round, golden object.

Vegeta held his breath. He should have thrown the medal in the bin.

Goku turned it over in his hands. He focused on the warping of the gold caused by Vegeta's grip, then on the broken webbing.

«Vegeta?»

«Time to sleep, Kakarot!» he quickly announced and, with a dry gesture, he lay down on the cot facing the wall. He couldn't stand the moron's inquisitive gaze, not that night.

«Vegeta.» Goku's voice became more serious, uncompromising.

No, no, no, absolutely not, it wouldn't give him the satisfaction of talking about that thing. He never gave him the satisfaction of talking about anything, to be honest.

«What?!» he blurted out. «I dropped it, put it there somewhere and turn off the light, I'm sleepy».

Vegeta heard Goku sigh and, he was sure, he had opened his garbage mouth to argue. To his astonishment, however, he said nothing. He remained silent and did what was ordered.

Lights off and goodnight to the universe.

The hum of the ship was incessant, but still too faint to drown out the noisy thoughts in Vegeta's head. The faint beam of security light from the corridor illuminated the floor of the room. Just to counter the deep darkness of the open space and the darkness inside Vegeta's chest. Always present, like a black shadow of the past that devoured him from within.

He rolled over in the cot several times, hoping to find a sleep that would never come. Perhaps it was better this way: the recurring nightmares were much more vivid when he was outside the orbit of a planet.

«You're not sleeping».

Kakarot's voice caught him off guard and he initially cursed himself for making noise. Unlikely that it was he who woke him: that overgrown child slept like a log and not even a collision with any asteroid would have awakened him from the REM phase.

Maybe he was not sleeping at all, too.

«... no» the prince then exhaled.

«What's the matter with you, Vegeta? I mean, seriously».

The idiot who couldn't look beyond an inch of his nose was astounding him with a sudden attack of empathic observation at two in the morning.

«I guess it's ... space sickness» Vegeta said, hoping to be convincing.

After all, he didn't go that far from reality.

Goku went silent for a while, still, motionless in his cot. Not a creak, not a rustle of blankets.

But, just when Vegeta was starting to hope that Morpheus was near to take the idiot in his arms, he spoke again.

«If it weren't for you, we'd all be dead, you know?»

Heck, he knew him well then. What a great affront to admit it!

Vegeta swallowed his pride. Who did he want to deceive? Kakarot knows him well since years and, to chew his dignity well, it was the closest thing to a friend for him.

A true friend. They had spent so much time with each other over the last few years that they practically knew each other like the back of their hands, yet Vegeta still wondered how much Goku could pick up on his mood swings.

Except that the moron usually dragged him into a spar to the death to let him cool off. He had learned that the prince was not a particularly talkative type and, therefore, he respected his silences and did not insist. Usually.

Not that night. That night Kakarot noticed he was more upset than normal and, damn it, he was right.

«And if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle. What are you trying to point out, Kakarot?» Vegeta grunted.

«You saved everyone. Several times, even sacrificing your own life!».

He knew. Goku knew what his torments came from. But his clemency and his foolish good heart would certainly not have been enough to convince him otherwise.

«Don't paint me as I'm not. You are the hero, I'm the villain. Game over!» croaked the prince. He hoped the darkness would swallow him, swallow them both.

«Vegeta ... don't be so hard with yourself».

The prince squinted. He didn't deserve those words of comfort, he didn't deserve praise. He didn't deserve to be considered a hero, much less a martyr.

«Kakarot-»

«Even if what you did in the last few weeks won't change the past... if you hadn't been with me - with us - we wouldn't have won this battle. And many others. It's just a fact».

«Please, Kakarot, shut up» he pleaded, and Kakarot fell silent.

Darkness swallowed them for real, and it wasn't as pleasant as Vegeta had hoped. At least the fool's voice had coved his torments.

Maybe it had been a little unfair to him.

He was unfair get mad to Kakarot and treat him badly, for once he wasn't saying anything particularly stupid. What that decerebrate was saying was really a fact. And despite everything, it was just an attempt to make him feel better.

Vegeta sighed and cursed himself. He couldn't change the past, but that didn't have to become an excuse for always being a complete asshole in the present.

The weight on his chest eased.

«Kakarot?»

«Yup?»

«Breakfast... it's at seven o'clock».

A unconventional way to say _thanks_ , but that giant idiot would have understood it. Because he was his friend.

And thanks to him he was convinced that no, he would never be a hero... but maybe he could continue to work hard not to be the villain.

**Author's Note:**

> ... I hope I haven't made a mess with the translation!  
> I want to thank the talented Stardust_Steel for inspiring me with her stories (go and read them, they are beautiful).  
> Thanks to all who have read this messy little english experiment!  
> Ciao ciao :)  
> Eevaa


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